How does netflix work?

What films are on netflix? How about..how do they get those films to your home?
During peak hours Netflix can account for up to a third of all internet traffic in the USA!
How does Netflix manage to stream all of that data to everyone seamlessly? Lets find out.

what films are on netflix


The company has its own content delivery network!.
A content delivery network is a group of storage servers that store data close to the locations where it will be viewed.
This reduces bandwidth costs by a lot, and makes it much easier to scale out their services over a massive area. For what films are on netflix this is pretty important.

Before Netflix had their own network, they used 3rd party caching providers. However a few years ago they switched on their own network that is much more powerful.
Netflix also created their own storage hardware. It was custom built and made just for streaming video.
It uses both hard drive type technology mashed with flash drive technology to optimize both storage and power.
The hard drive tech is used the most. They are massively huge and store 100TB of data each. Each server handles 10 to 20 thousand streams at once.

Netflix servers


To keep up to date, Netflix re-designs it's servers every single year. You may be asking...how do they get all of the data uploaded for what films are on netflix to the servers? They load up every server manually with data before it is shipped to it's location to save on time and bandwidth.
The total space used is over a Petabyte! To help even further with the bandwidth management, during slow times of the day, the servers pre-load many of the most popular shows to save time.

Another effective technique Netflix uses is that they connect in at ISP data centers, or even the ISPs directly. Netflix will install their equipment at the ISPs location free of charge.
All of this gives Netflix super control over their network allowing them to optimize their system to the maximum effect.

You would think this type of operation would require many workers to maintain. However, only around 40 people work to keep the CDN running.
So the next time you stream your netflix movies, take a moment to realize the massive amounts of technology and planning that has gone into displaying the most up to date Netflix shows in your living room.


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